Black Widow

iTrader: (2)

Look forward to your Findings.

Arch

iTrader: (59)

What a crass comment why would a mapper feel the need to justify his actions to someone who has just accused the mapping commumnity of "ripping off" their customers and has neither the knowledge or experience to know fully what the job entails. If you do have the knowledge and experience to unequivically state all that mappers are "ripping off" their customers, as thats what the thread title suggests, then prove it and answer the questions Paul posed on a previous post, cant wait for the answers!

Tidgy

the 7/20 came form me chap, was the number of engines the last company that started offering realy cheap maps managed to blow up.

This was after the guy had played around with his own car, then said he wasn't gonna do any more, then mapped his mates, then started a company, and promtly blew up half the cars.

Also should note that some of the maps on the others that did survive were awefull.

toneh

iTrader: (1)

It was not meant to be controversial , I respect you John but I'm suprised you've just focused on the blow up aspect
Do you then think its ok to set up a company to map cars when you can't grasp o/s and not confidant enough to map your own ?
Do you also think its ok for a company to push you a product you don't want because there's more money and it'd easier for them
Like I said John I respect you , but I'm sure you can't agree with all the issues
and you are correct there are two sides to every story
But with the exception of Paul the other side doesn't want to tell there side

Arch

iTrader: (59)

Why would any professional who has learned his trade and built up his knowledge base through experience and study give all his knowledge away free of charge and kill his industry. A mapping section would, in my opinion, not be frequented by the top level mappers for obvious reasons. It would then be left to the DIY guys posting about the amount of bhp they have wrung out of their cars 2 weeks before they detted themselves to death.

sweden

iTrader: (2)

So what sort of gear would you need to slightly tweak your map say if you fitted a new exhaust or a larger filter, I'm running a type R with simtek have simtek/act software and cable at the mo I'm guessing a wide band lambda would be a most but what else, before it starts yes it will be mapped on RR by professional mapper I'm thinking about when I'm adding changing smaller items in the future as we all know it's a never ending process, anything major I'd RR, any literature I should be reading as well, I'm a mechanic by trade.

Evolution Stu

iTrader: (2)

Some of us simply enjoy teaching others. It will hardly kill the industry, that is like saying a brickie telling you how to build a wall will then put him out of work.

As an example -
I am quite heavily into home HiFi and really enjoy some of the stuff on forums I frequent from audio engineers about building amps, speakers, enclosures and the like. Things like enclosure design using thiel small parameters have been pretty much standard knowledge to me since I was about 16 years old and into the car audio scene.

This accumulated knowledge of an industry I am interested in has not made me try and build my own system, nor has it stopped me recently spending £8000 with a smile on my professional Hifi system, but what my quest to further my knowledge did do, is allow me to make a much more informed decision about whether the guy I was talking to in the shop had a bloody clue what he was talking about before I allowed him to advise me on suitability of products for my requirements and relieve me of £8K.

Forewarned is forearmed, and it works in virtually every walk of life. A bull****ter can be spotted from a thousand paces with a couple of well formed questions directed straight to his face... ask 20 mappers why the vanos maps on the V10 MSS60 ECU seem to work inversely to every other map and see what they say... they must know, as there is no other way to get power from that engine. Or even ask them how many switch points and maps the cars ECU has... you will see all but the professional OE re-mappers stumble and start to feel lost, or launch into bull****, but the real pro's who work with it all day will remember it well as its the first mainstream Siemens ECU to have over 14000 different maps and switchpoints. The newest Bosch system now has a tad over 16000, and without ECAS and its exported a2l file, nobody is going to be decompiling it anytime soon. LOL.

Gigsy

Some what bigoted view, I think.

I doubt that many top mappers would frequent the section if it was just people bragging about how much BHP they'd made, but if (as I suspect it would more likely be) a place where people could share knowledge and help each other out, then they may well make an appearance - especially if it were discussing an interesting high level issue/topic for example.

Gigsy

Have seen your project thread, nice looking car you've got there.

Am sure others will chime in but a wideband and a reliable method of checking boost would be top of my list.

john banks

toneh, there are quite a few professional mappers that prefer commercial tuning software to open source. Many appreciate the support and the polish that goes into a commercial product. Many struggle to tie together accurate and comprehensive map definitions for the variety of ECUs they will encounter. There are professional mappers around that are supreme at tuning an engine given the correct map definitions and table explanations, but they cannot identify maps from raw hex like some DIY tuners can. They leave companies like Ecutek and Cobb to do that for them. Division of labour, they stick to what they do best. I had tuned a few hundred cars commercially before I actually ever saw an unencrypted flash image along with an initial definition that I could learn the chip from. I daresay there are probably some excellent tuners that don't know hex at all, and it doesn't matter one jot to them.

If you push them to map open source when they don't want to then they have every valid reason to refuse. They aren't doing it to make more money, what some do is use open source and tell you they are using a commercial product. In some cases you would never and could never know from the ECU or the tune. On the Evo 7-9 for example, you can read and write commercial signatures and pull the wool over a customer's eyes. I don't know why they don't just say they're using open source, it doesn't matter, the quality of the work does.

Gigsy

Indeed, at the end of the day, the tool is less important than the quality of the work.

toneh

iTrader: (1)

You mean the tool that makes it easier
This gets better
I'm busy at the moment but would like to elaborate on this one

Gigsy

Not really, for example I can write source code on any number of IDEs and to be honest they all have their pluses and minuses as far as their functionality is concerned. However, irrespective of which tool I use, the quality of my code won't change.

This would be exactly the same as if you, I, JGM, Pavlo, Stu, whoever mapped with OS compared with say EcuTek. We'd all still only be able to map to the best of our ability - the tool itself should not affect the quality of the work.

So yes, please do elaborate on how "this gets better".




PS am not putting myself in the same league as the pro mappers btw, merely saying I'd be able to map just as badly on OS and I could on EcuTek

john banks

There are many instances where the mapping tool does affect the quality of the work. Happy to elaborate.

Evolution Stu

iTrader: (2)

I agree in most instances, however, I would like to elaborate on that somewhat.

With the pro solutions, you can at least expect the definitions to be correct, with accurate axis and scaling. This again justifies the costs to the calibrator as without accurate definitions and table access, his remap will never be any good.

The amount of OS definitions I see that are totally incorrect is very worrying, especially for those that simply will not notice they are dangerously adding more spark lead to an already very lean map, instead of adding more injector duration as labelled in the OS definition file.

In fact, some of my pro tools are just as bad come to think of it, but none of them are biased towards one vehicle or marque so the onus is absolutely on the calibrator to realise this if using a predefined definition on something like Swiftec, Winols, Race Evolution etc etc, where in the scoob world, you can quite understandably expect it to be accurate if your using a specialist product like ECUTEK who have dedicated themselves to offering calibrators a product to access the parts of the Subaru firmware they need without worrying it is not doing what it says on the tin. That is exactly why I sought to be a dealership for them years ago, but sadly failed due to location.

When they refused me I turned away from Scoobs totally as the accurate reverse engineering for them, back then, would have been too time consuming for us as they are quite a unique system compared to the German Bosch & Siemens products that we already understand very well and testing had taught us very quickly that open source for the scoobs, at least back then, was very inaccurate and you were never quite sure you were really in a maf transfer table and not a knock table for example, without extensive testing and analysis, and that is never any fun, nor particularly safe for the engine from a purely cumulative damage point of view..

The thing with reverse engineering is, its not usually done with applied science, its usually a lot of guesswork and when we have to decipher a huge ECU firmware with 10'000+ maps and switchpoints, the amount of suck it and see is huge until you come up with a suitable set of offsets to make the calibration changes required and are confident they are likely correct enough to start hitting some serious and productive dyno time to start actually looking for more power / economy / whatever.

I wrote a topic over on PF all about reverse engineering firmware once, most people would be surprised at the work involved and again, often forget or don't realise that all the research and development time, cost and effort requires a return by way of sales from the finished product which yes, we may program into cars in under an hour, but what about the 300hrs solid it took us to reverse engineer say, the OBD programming protocol for the Focus RS MKII for example. (We were first in the world to be able to read and write that vehicle by OBD and in conjunction with Alientech and Dimsport it took us all a LOT of time and effort with poxy port sniffers etc) and that's before all the time required to find 320 bhp from the standard fuel system once it did all work.

Anyway... I am waffling off topic somewhat, but my point is, mapping costs are not wholly about the finished product when you are doing the development and sending it out to resellers. That is why licensed products tend, on the face of it, to appear very expensive compared to open source, at least until the research and development costs are wholly recouped with some profit towards new projects, and that can take a long time in a tiny market such as ECU remapping.

Gigsy

OK, I'll quantify.... given the definitions etc are are accurate, the tool shouldn't matter as much as the skill of the person operating the it. Bad workman blaming tools etc


Re paying for software vs open source, I agree it is good to have software where it's someones job to make sure feature X works.

Equally a lot of Open Source stuff can provide 90% or more of the functionality which allows people who otherwise wouldn't have the budget to get involved with things (I'm not necessarily talking mapping here).

john banks

Stu made many of the points I was thinking of regarding complete and accurate definitions, and it isn't a small point when open source contributors such as myself had particular interest in good definitions for the models they were dealing with, but not some others which can and did produce a fragmented product.

There is further significance in terms of features in the ECU code itself which varies massively in its effectiveness between solutions, with open source not always being the winner. Both platforms I reverse engineered, one open source and once commercial, relied on custom ECU code (not just data) to increase boost and airflow/load limits, to control the boost better, to run speed density and realtime mapping with the engine running. These and other features allowed higher performance engines to be controlled better (if at all) or mapped quicker.

Good workmen sometimes blame bad tools, or rather they don't use poor ones.

dj219957

"Well he does post a hell of alot of wink smilies. Some folk may get the wrong idea and think he's flirting ."

yes ive noticed that

toneh

iTrader: (1)

right i had posted my elaboration but deleted by mistake
as regards o/s and commercial software
call me cynical but my guess is the main reason to use commercial software is the fact its more user friendly i,e your defs are correct and done for you ,
this will make a more attractive package to sell to potential customers ,mappers
now people go to ecutek approved mappers because its seen by some as a stamp of a quality mapper
yes you still have to do your tables (which takes experience and skill) but if all youve got to do is plug in and do your tables i would say this is the easy option
just because you use commercial software dont mean you are top notch (which some believe is the case and niether should you charge so (which some do)

in my deleted post i put what i had to do (but im just gonna get slagged so im leaving it out)

but if a mapper can look in a def file make changes, ect ,scale ,insert tables ,l/c ect means a lot more and says more about his skill level
and also you have to take more care because of bad defs , bugs , updates and can take nothing for granted and then still have to do the tables

if a mapper wants to use commercial software its his choice , and if anything the customer pays more for making his job easier

and using bad defs as a reason not to map o/s is a little bit of a get out
any mapper worth his salt will sort that

dredd

who was this? pm me if you like

toneh

iTrader: (1)

now lets get this straight
lad does his car and then starts mapping and 7 out of 20 blow

when you pop round mate you can fill me in on this , because it seems a little far fetched to me
so the other 13 got a little worried and decided to have there cars checked

do you know this for fact or did somone tell you

dredd

to be honest mate i know nothing? i just wanted to know who it was, no malice intended

toneh

iTrader: (1)

lol i meant tidgy mate

but heres one to try if diy blow ups are so common go on these sites
romraider
open ecu
nasioc mapping section
by all accounts they should be full of folks sitting in tears because they have blown there car up with diy maps and a mates and maybe a mate of a mates

post back all those you can find mate

oh i forgot they dont post that bit (before somone says it )

john banks

I don't agree. Some commercial mappers see this as a lot of faffing about that they don't have time for, some don't have the skills for and some aren't interested in. Pattern recognition to find a few tables that are defined in a closely related ECU but not or incorrectly in yours, doesn't a reverse engineer make, and doesn't make someone capable of it in any way superior to a tuner that can't or won't do this. It is an irrelevant skill when it comes to actually tuning an engine well.

dredd

whoops sorry

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

you got ripped off. I got a geekmapper a crate of beer for tweaking my evo map

toneh

iTrader: (1)

Up to a point John I agree but you've hit the nail on the head with two points
Saves faffing about , less time , this is of benefit to the mapper not the customer and don't have the skills
Like I said none of this benefits the customer and more often than not the cost still remains the same
And a knowledge of defs , patches , bugs , is not important to a lot of mappers but does show there's less chance he's just got his cheque book out And takes more interest in his chosen trade ?
And of course the final table adjustments is the final proof of the quality of his work

Evolution Stu

iTrader: (2)

Really?
So if we have this conversation in ten years, and you have progressed the ladder to be a very skilled and well known mapper, but I give you an ECU you cant properly decrypt yourself, your telling me you should now be publicised as a crap mapper?

What the hell has reverse engineering ECU's got to do with the skills needed for mapping? Engine building skills yes, no argument, they will always add to a mappers technical ability as will advanced diagnostic skills, but software coding? Why?

Evolution Stu

iTrader: (2)

Doh.. sorry for repeating you, I went to make a brew after pressing quote as my wireless dropped out.

toneh

iTrader: (1)

Well for a start for my chosen rom on my car I had 2 choices a def from scratch or an inherited def from another model , I chose the latter so without It I would have been in for a lot more work
Like I said it also goes a long way to prove there's a better chance your dealing with someone with more of a passion for his trade rather than , a quick set up and lets get cashing in and map as many as we can as quick as we can